Under existing equities trading systems, a trader needs to review every order, including small orders, and make a decision as to whether to send the order to an exchange or to fill the order from the inventory of the brokerage. For certain orders, for example where the client has asked for a limit order, the trader would need to review the order and perform an action on it. While this arrangement provides for accurate order placement, it lengthens the time between when the order is placed and when the order is filled due to the review process undertaken by the trader.
In an environment where market movements may be large and rapid, short execution times are critical in obtaining the best possible price for a trade. Combine the rapidly-moving markets with computer-enabled order placement, and customers desire (and often expect) to have their orders executed as soon as possible after being placed. By requiring the trader to manually review each order and make a decision thereon, the execution time of the order is inherently slow. It is therefore desirable to shorten the time between when an order is placed and when the order is executed. The system and method of the present invention are designed to overcome the limitations in the prior art.